


Filling the Silence

by yuletide_archivist



Category: The Little Mermaid (1989)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-12-25
Updated: 2004-12-25
Packaged: 2018-01-25 02:17:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1626302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eric visits Ariel in the night and realizes that he's been going about things all wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Filling the Silence

**Author's Note:**

> Written for bizarra

 

 

The sound that brought Eric to the castle's guest chambers wasn't crying exactly. Crying had a soft, musical sound. The sound he heard was more like the rustle of dry leaves over stone. Breathy. The shadow of the sounds his sisters had made at the low rumble of thunder or when he set off on long voyages.

He pushed aside a heavy curtain to peek through thin chiffon. These women's chambers were like mazes. Yards of fabric and elaborate drapes. All to sleep in? He preferred the crisp billowing of sails. Even now, after nearly losing his life to the depths, he preferred the ocean's simplicity to his father's gaudy castle. 

  
  
The redhead was in the bed. He could see the flower-bright sheen of her hair through the layers of pale blues and greens that made up the nautical-themed guest room--the only room he'd deemed appropriate for his future bride. After all, she'd worn the sea's mist and the morning sunlight with more grace than the kingdom's women contained in a fingernail. 

  
  
_No. This wasn't her. She's not the same girl. She can't speak. This isn't your bride._   
  


Eric's soft sigh cut off short. The redhead was crying. The huge velvet pillows on the coverlet dwarfed her small frame like great boulders, and once again Eric was reminded of a feverish memory. _Slim shoulders against the storm-swept sky. Hair tossed like fire in the wind._  
  


"Miss," he whispered, pushing through the veils that surrounded the bed before he could control his own actions.  
  


She jumped and backed against the headboard like a cornered mouse, and they both froze with the realization of how inappropriate the moment was. The girl wore nothing. Eric wore little more than a thin nightshirt and breeches. The silent moment only held for another heartbeat before the girl wiped her tears away viciously and gestured over and over at a thin pile of silk at the end of the bed. 

  
  
Eric looked from the small nightgown back to the girl, slow to understand what she meant. His heartbeat tore through him, and he was certain that if the young woman had found her voice just then, he wouldn't have heard it over the sound of his own blood. He'd visited women in ports. He'd even `visited' with the daughter of a mill keeper north of his kingdom. Nothing he'd seen had looked quite like the skin of the redhead against the dark blue velvet coverlet. She glowed. Eric was sure of it. Her skin glowed as if nothing had ever touched it. Not sunlight, not man. She -- Even the faint brush of hair between her thighs had been the same color as... 

  
  
Eric's thoughts slammed to a halt as a pillow made abrupt, forceful contact with the side of his head.  
  


He looked aside to find the girl perching behind a large pillow, her big eyes narrowed in exasperation as she continued to gesture at the slip of a nightgown now clutched like an anchor line in Eric's big hands.  
  


"Oh! Oh. Oh," Eric stuttered, thrusting his hand toward her while quickly looking away. "I've made an ass out of myself, haven't I? You must think I'm -- well. I was looking but, it's just that. You're very. I should stop talking." 

  
  
After a few moments' rustling and a valiant but failed attempt to keep from imagining that watery silk flowing over the pale pink heat of the girl's nipples, Eric looked back at her in time to catch her nodding emphatically. 

  
  
They both laughed, Eric's laugh deep and warm, the girl's laugh silent.   
  


Her eyes darkened and she touched her throat, her laughter dying into a shallow sigh. 

  
  
"Why were you crying?" Eric asked, quick to fill the silence. "Are you afraid here? I can have a bed arranged for you somewhere else in the castle if you'd like -- " 

  
  
He trailed off as the girl shook her head. She'd shifted as he spoke, sitting back against the headboard again, her body nearly entirely obscured by pillows. He smiled at the sight. 

  
  
Her mouth opened as if to form a word and she scowled to herself before crossing her arms childishly around a pillow and shaking her head.  
  


"Do -- hmm. Do you not want to tell me?" 

  
  
The girl nodded, looking pleased. 

  
  
Eric sighed and sat down at the foot of the huge bed, well out of reach. He tucked one knee up to his chest and looked toward the bedroom's huge window. He knew that just past the layers of heavy drapes the window allowed for a view of the kingdom's harbor. He wondered if she missed the taste of sharp sea air as much as he did. Despite her pale skin, she seemed too alive, too vibrant to be a chambermaid or a lady of any kingdom. A woman like this wasn't made to stay indoors.  
  


"I learned to swim before I could walk," Eric murmured. "I suppose it's funny that I ended up nearly drowning. Sometimes I have dreams that I live in the sea. Can you imagine that?" 

  
  
The girl smiled, pulling a pillow closer to her chest and resting her sharp chin against the softness of it.  
  


He looked back at her and smiled faintly, bemused at how easy it was to speak in front of the girl. She watched him with none of the vacant expectation of the courtly women. She didn't appear to want to know a thing about his latest fashionable boots or his cousin's upcoming wedding celebration. 

  
  
His brow knit faintly as he wondered if all of this was just wishful thinking, if he filled her silence with his own desires. 

  
  
She tilted her head, a small, curious frown wrinkling her nose.  
  


"Would you believe that once in a while being royalty is -- well, a burden? I mean, my father expects things of me sometimes that I'm certain I wasn't born for," Eric said softly. 

  
  
The girl nodded, squeezing the pillow in her arms.  
  


"I must seem spoiled," Eric mumbled. 

  
  
She shook her head, lips parting once more in a silent laugh that Eric swore echoed with the sound of bell-like music. He blinked at her, at her bright smiling eyes and the fall of her hair across the dark pillows and her pale shoulders.   
  


"I need to think," he blurted softly, pushing out of the bed and through the curtains that threatened to trip him. When he paused, standing on the granite landing around the bed, he watched her through fabric that still rippled like the surface of a pool. He needed to walk. Needed to hear the ocean, needed to finger the haunting tune of his memory on his slim reed flute. He needed to marry this girl, needed to speak to his father, needed to clear his head. 

  
  
She smiled at him through the warbling blue veil, eyes calm and sure. And dry, Eric noted gratefully as he sank into a deep bow and left for the rocky shore beneath the castle. 

 


End file.
